


Substitution

by yosjiefo



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Identity Issues, deimne/daisy mentioned in dalvin's chapter, tags will be added with each new character chapter but all subkids will be the focus here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29546235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yosjiefo/pseuds/yosjiefo
Summary: Askr has the power to reunite comrades and loved ones, but what happens when your liege lord suddenly doesn't recognize you nor any of the other people he had sworn to fight with, shared his ideals with, and even lived so much of his life with? Substitute Kid-centric.
Relationships: Roddlevan | Dalvin & Dimna | Deimne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Starting up a new project, hoping I keep the steam with this one to actually finish it in a timely manner. Current plan is to dedicate one chapter for every single substitute kid from FE4, and each chapter will be named after the focus character of the chapter, but the chapters still connect with one another for a larger story arc as a note.
> 
> The order is what happens to work best with me as opposed to recruitment order. Currently unsure whether or not I'll add a chapter dedicated to Iucharba as a bonus considering he's basically treated as one to Iuchar in most people's runs, but as of right now, I do not have a specific chapter dedicated to him in the plans.

"It's great to have all of you guys here! I had been thinking it had been a while since we'd seen any Jugdrali heroes," Princess Sharena chirps as she leads the newly recruited heroes through the Order of Heroes' base.

They should have all realized that when she had said that, that meant there were heroes summoned to Askr other than them. They had all recognized one another and came together with the exception of faces like Oifey, Ares, Leif, and so on, but it wasn't that big a deal right? Surely, there was nothing amiss with how they had come to the lands of Zenith separately.

"Um," Muirne pipes up, hopeful. "Is Sir Seliph here by chance...?"

"Oh, Seliph? Yeah! He's been here for ages, in fact!"

At once, all of them had become a raucous crowd. They had feared the central figure that led them all to glory had been gone, but it looks like they didn't need to worry about such a thing at all. Sharena's face glows with happiness to see them all like that, all too aware of the warm feeling that comes with being with others and gaining joy from those bonds.

"Say, if you all want, why don't we try and go find him?" Sharena suggested.

"You would?" Tristan asks, a bit dubious.

However, Dalvin's excitement far eclipses his own voice, as he cries out, "Yes, please! C'mon!! Let's go see him!"

"Alright, alright!" Tristan snaps back, giving a severe smack against the back of the other swordsman's head. He turns to Sharena then. "Sorry, this one's a bit loud."

The princess only laughs. "It's fine, it's fine! I like to see that kind of energy around here. Anyway, let's go. No time like the present, right?"

"You've got that right!!"

"Shut up, Dalvin!"

The familiarity of the scene brings another laugh from their group, and just like that, they are all following Sharena with the new goal of reuniting with their commander. Luckily enough for them, it does not take long, for Sharena spots the junior lord conversing with another familiar face to them all.

"Hey there, Seliph! I've brought a lot of friends this time," Sharena greets him. In return, Seliph gives a warm smile and cordial wave.

"Haha, so I see. That's quite the number of people there."

"Too many people, if you ask me," Ares at his side comments, crossing his arms.

"Don't be like that, Ares," Seliph chastises him then. "I'm sure they're very nice people."

"This is the problem with you. You're too... trusting."

The two surely could have gone on forever in their dispute, but it is at this point Laylea emerges from their group, taking a step closer to the two lordlings.

"I see you two are the same as ever," she notes, though her peers could tell the smile she wears is anything but easygoing. She is normally the light in their group, giving them the energy to keep going, but right now, she is cautious and testing the waters, for she had started to gain some doubts about the situation — doubts that she did not bear alone. "But... you two are quite something to talk like that in front of old friends, aren't you? There's only so many times we need to go through the same parade over and over again."

It is then that she shoots her dark gaze over to Ares, a fear in her eyes that betrays the smile she forces as a part of her investigation. But the gaze that she gets in return is not familiar; no, it is anything but. When she looks at the Black Knight, it is not the face of the man who had betrayed the man who raised him so just to save her but rather the face of a man who looks at her like she is a stranger saying even stranger things.

"Um... I think there's a misunderstanding here," Seliph cuts in. For that moment, it feels like nobody can breathe. The decisive blow they had been anticipating comes in, and it wracks them all much worse than they realized it would. "I don't believe any of us have met before...?"

Chaos ensues. Some of them are rendered mute in their surprise, but their eyes look back in horror. Others cry out in disbelief. Some egg on the junior lord to say it's all a joke, but they know he's not much of a kidder. But the loudest of them release their anger, unsure how else in the moment to react to such a verbal slap in the face for in that moment, the man who had been their brightest hope had brought them to their deepest despair as he denied their very existences.

To him, it turns out, they were nothing more than substitutes for the people he had fought with.


	2. Deimne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Childhood friend of Seliph, Jugdral's liberator. A prior crybaby who became a student underneath Oifey, he grapples with feelings of not belonging no matter what he does.

What does it mean to be Isaachian? If you asked Deimne, he’d say it’s complicated and that’s really all you need to know about it. Call him out on being evasive and he’ll just say he was born it. That’s it, he insists. There’s nothing more.

Could that really be true when he had been fighting a war to restore the name? Could that be really true when he grew up wishing he was raised in Grannvale, where the people prosper and can hold their heads high?

Though that wasn’t completely true either. To grow up in Grannvale with his thick hair and northern blood meant just about the same as it did in Isaach if not worse. He’d be surrounded by the people who decided that to be an Isaachian was to be a slave, to be sub-human, to be worth not a soul shared among the stars as was commonly uttered but instead on level with the dirt.

No, it’s to be an Isaachian that’s the problem, he decides. “I wish I were like them,” he says, sighing on it.

“Like whom?”

“Like… Sir Oifey,” Deimne answers his sister. He leaves out the part where he means to say like King Danann and Emperor Arvis and all the rest when he sees Muirne nod. He envies the chivalry, the holy blood, but the thing that makes him feel the most sorry for himself right now is none of that.

It’s that thin hair, the fair skin, the ability to be called anything but an Isaachian. If he didn’t need to train, he’d consider never staying a day out in the sun. Maybe he’d look a little less like himself then. He tans too easily, too much for a boy of Grannvale if he ever wished to pass as one.

He stops talking about the stars, the moon, and the sun with his sister. He stops talking of Astra, of Luna, of Sol. Yet when he hears Prince Shannan, Dame Larcei, and Sir Scáthach all speak of the cosmos, a part of him can’t deny that he feels the envy and the pity all over again. They can stand out there and be proud, they can raise their heads high despite knowing the soldiers sent under House Dozel sneer at the way Isaachians revere the heavens.

They aren’t cowards.

But the thing that unnerves him the most is to realize that in Askr, where he can meet all of the people who parallel him and the people he knows, the person who he was supposedly the replacement for was Lord Lester of House Yngvi.

 _House Yngvi!_ A noble! Not only that, but a noble with blood from Grannvale in his veins! It would do no good to investigate all the nobles that Lord Seliph was suddenly associating himself with — rather, all the people that this Lord Seliph had apparently been associating with his whole life— a life that had nothing to do with him or Muirne or Tristan or anybody he had once called dear. But curiosity beckoned Deimne forward, and he realized the only officer in this Seliph's army that was also an arch knight was Lester.

"Are you still thinking about...?" Muirne speaks up, voice quiet.

"Mm," Deimne nods. She didn't need to say the name for him to know she knew. Of course she did. They had stuck to one another like glue ever since the revelation came out they were just mere substitutes, closer than ever before. "It's just strange."

"Yeah..."

Muirne's eyes have this far-off quality, and though Deimne feels like he ought to press her on it, he knows all too well what's plaguing her right now. She had loved Lord Seliph, and just as Deimne had warned her, those feelings would only bring her pain. However, when he sees her one word away from openly weeping, he doesn't have the heart to tell her he had been right.

If anything, he almost wishes he hadn't been. She might be taking this all worse than him even.

So they rest in his quarters, as afforded by the Order of Heroes, in complete silence, but the silence lets him think too much. He thinks back to Lester, and how he is like a glimpse into an alternate dimension where he has the Grannvalian blood he had coveted so much. Lester may have some world of troubles that Deimne doesn't know about, but there is one thing Deimne feels confident in: there is no way Lester shares his complicated self-hatred over his very existence and his yearning to be proud of who he was.

"I'm sorry, Muirne," Deimne pulls himself off his bed, pulling on his coat so he may get ready to leave. 

"Huh? Where— Where are you going?"

"To talk to Dalvin, wherever he is. I need to clear my head, or I'm gonna get more depressed than normal."

"Oh. Okay."

Deimne opens the door, and just before he leaves, he looks back to his sister one last time. "Look after yourself too. You're free to waste time in my room if that's what you need to do."

And with that, he leaves, hearing his sister's sobs the moment the door has closed between them.


	3. Dalvin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A childhood friend of Seliph, liberator of Jugdral. A pushy person, he often catches onto the truth of matters faster than anyone else, much to his friends' chagrin.

"So, you wanted to talk?"

Deimne quirks a brow. "You can tell?"

"Hm, kinda. You're usually pretty easy to read, I'd say." Dalvin slides over the dish he's made. When Deimne looks at it, the not quite confused but most definitely questioning look on his face remains.

"What's this?"

"A li'l something one of the other heroes taught me how to make before you came barreling in. It's pretty good, if I say so myself!"

"Your sense of taste sucks," Deimne retorts. Still, he's cracking a grin now, and that's really all Dalvin wanted to see. "You just want me to eat this, right?"

Dalvin nods. When Deimne eats, he eats well; it's just getting him to that point. That was one thing Dalvin had learned about the other boy since they'd grown up in Tirnanog. Deimne was the type to turn down anything, but the moment you showed him it was already made, he'd have no choice but to accept. It probably made him feel awful to waste food. That was his commoner roots kicking in, no matter how much time he had spent training under a noble like Sir Oifey.

Deimne and Tristan both were pretty easy people to figure out. It had taken a bit more time to understand how to push them than it did Creidne, but both had eventually come around.

He wonders if that's why Deimne is seeking him out now. The poor guy's been more reclusive than normal.

"So, what's it you want to talk about?" he asks once Deimne's polished off all the meat in front of him.

"I... I dunno, really."

"That so?" He's running away from something then, most likely. It didn't take a genius to figure out what. It's not like he was alone in that desire ever since they'd had that chat with Seliph. "Alright then. Why don't you talk to someone else?"

Deimne's gaze flicks up. "Huh? Jeez... even someone like you's pushing me away now..." The arch knight grumbles a bit, but Dalvin is quick to shake his head.

"Not really. You're jumping the bowgun again." How to explain this in a way that wouldn't get Deimne on one of his self-deprecating rambles though? He takes a moment to think before starting up again, "I just think you can't talk to me because you know every topic we've got is something you don't want to think about."

Deimne's face twists. "Like... what?"

"Our sisters."

A jump. So, he was probably right then?

"Sir Seliph?"

He's looking away now! Hm... Then...

"An' our homeland."

"Alright, you got me." Deimne sighs. "I guess... you're right. I kinda ran here without thinking... But it's not like the two of us have got a lot of people to talk to. I mean... it's just us by ourselves here..."

"Funny words to say when we're surrounded by loads of heroes from other worlds." He loads another helping of food onto Deimne's plate, much to the boy's dismay. Still, Deimne forks into it. Good. He'd need to a reason to stay here and listen to the whole thing. "I know you've got your whole thing where you think we shouldn't talk to nobles and those with holy blood, but I talked to Sir Scáthach yesterday."

"...What's the point?"

"Well, he's the one who talked to me first, actually. But I didn't avoid him cause I thought it'd be good for me." He remembers the other swordsman still, and how much more quiet and mild-mannered than himself he had been. Yet still, without even a word exchanged on the matter, it seemed as if both of them had understood what the other was to them. Isaachian twins who were childhood friends of Sir Seliph... They were one another's shadows. A version of them that existed but did not interact directly with the world they knew — similar enough but not enough to be able to point at them and call the other person quite themselves. "I don't want to be stuck moping about things forever. It's better to approach these things head on and get it over with, and hey, maybe I'd learn a little something!"

"...Are you telling me to talk to Sir Lester?"

"Haha, maybe not, unless you want to, but I'd imagine that's a pretty big leap for a guy like you. Maybe you should stop tailing them though, only to run away when they try and approach you." A pause. "I mean, it'd probably make you look less creepy. I think they think you're a stalker!"

"Good." So Deimne says, but he's staring down at his plate, a slight tremor in his voice. "This way, he won't want to talk to me anyway..."

"Okay, sure, you've botched it up there, but you can still talk to other people! There's a whole bunch of worlds here. Who's said you only need to talk to Jugdrali people, anyway?"

"Huh..."

It's not much of a response, but Dalvin would consider that a success anyway. It meant Deimne was at least thinking about it, at least.

"That's the thing with you. You're pretty close-minded, you know."

"And talking to these other people... is supposed to change that? Pah..."

"Hey! Don't go shooting perfectly good ideas like that! I get you're an archer, but...!!"

"Pfft." Deimne raises a hand to hide his mouth, but Dalvin's already heard it anyway. Maybe Deimne realized that, because soon enough, the boy's letting loose a hearty laugh — the loosest he's been in all the years the two have known each other. "Pft— hahaha! That..."

"Am I funny now? A comedic genius?"

"Nah," Deimne beams at him. "That was really lame, actually."

"Aw, c'mon! I thought it was pretty good..." Dalvin pretended to pout, but it doesn't last long. He can feel his own grin tugging at the corners of his lips. "It's good to hear you laugh though. When you came to Tirnanog, you've always had this harsh look on your face whenever you'd let us see you. Hell, even to Daisy, you look pretty sour."

"Mmn... Daisy's a pain, that's why."

"But you like her, right?"

Deimne takes a moment to consider things it looks before he shakes his head. "I just don't hate her."

"If you say so." It's true, the two didn't act like stereotypical lovers even back on Jugdral. If they were more like what the stories raved about, then in this realm where they have been pushed away from their home conflict, they could have spent time together on lovers' trysts, but as far as he knew, they still remained the same as ever.

He had been kind of hoping Daisy would've dragged Deimne out of his room more often. Maybe he'd need to check on her later too — see if something was up. She was the one who had wanted to give up things and live with Deimne in Isaach after everything, after all.

Then again, she was a pretty whimsical and hard to understand girl at times too. Maybe that had been a lie Deimne had regaled to him when they had talked to one another of things to do after the war.

There was still mysteries to puzzle out yet.

"So... did you?"

Now it was Dalvin's turn to be confused. "Did I what?"

"Y'know... Learn something."

Ahhh... Right. He had said something like that before, hadn't he? "I guess I learned he's a pretty decent guy. I think I'd like to talk to him some more."

"I hope you don't regret it at least..."

"Spoken like you don't believe in me being able to be happy with them!"

"Mm... No comment." At that point, Deimne's finished his second plate. It looks like their time was about to be up then.

"Hey, Deimne?"

"...Yeah?"

"You wanna know what the name of the dish I made you is?"

"...Does it matter?"

"A lot. It's super, super important!"

Deimne looks unconvinced, but he relents anyway. "Okay, fine. What's it called?"

"...Sol Piccata."

The arch knight's eyes go wide. Dalvin takes that moment to proceed, delivering the final blow he had wanted to.

"I think... it'd be nice if I got to talk to you about the stars again, Deimne. They're pretty amazing, able to burn so bright and be there every night, looking over us. I think they're looking over you too, even if you've stopped. After all, you're still their child like Creidne and I am."

 _You're still... Isaachian. So chin up._ Dalvin's not sure how well this manuever would go, but he finds it was better trying than to constantly assume it was destined to fail. That was what made Deimne and him different; it was all just a matter of perspective.

Dalvin was the one to keep pushing, hope on his side. If only Deimne hadn't gotten lost in his pessimism, maybe the two of them could've been a lot more alike beyond just a shared nation. He sees it in him — that keen sense of observation. Deimne knew his own sister's heart just like he did, but he used this intuition only to warn her of a destined tragedy.

Deimne needed to learn that destiny could be carved by his hands too, if only he would try.


End file.
